1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information processing apparatus including a printer driver capable of producing print information based on an output request from an application and outputting the produced print information to a printing apparatus, and also relates to a data processing method, a storage medium on which a computer-readable program is stored, and a program.
2. Description of the Related Art
When a plurality of users use a single output device for printing, it is necessary to determine which printed matter is of which user. To this end, each time a document of a particular user is printed, the name of the particular user is printed on a banner page by an application or a printer driver to identify the user of the printed document.
However, if a document is printed using another application, it is necessary to again make setting associated with a banner page. The format of the banner page varies depending on the printer driver and the application. The difference in the format of the banner page makes it difficult to quickly determine which document is of which user. To solve the above problem, for example, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 8-314654 discloses a technique of printing a banner page in the same format regardless of applications and printer drivers such that a network address of a sender of data is detected, a host file is referred to extract host information according to the network address of the sender, and information identifying a user, such as a host name, is printed on the banner page. After the banner page was printed, the main data of the user is printed.
On the other hand, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2003-108337 discloses a technique of managing printed results or simulation characteristics by printing a color patch in a margin and measuring the color patch using an intensity meter.
However, many users often revise their documents and save revised document data. In this case, it is not sufficient to simply identify users of respective printed documents, but it is necessary to identify versions of printed documents.
To solve the above problem, it has been proposed to automatically print a date/time each document was printed such that the date/time is inserted in the document or printed on a banner page. This technique is known as a time-stamping capability and has been implemented, for example, in Microsoft® Word.
However, in any technique, although it is possible to identify the date/time printing was performed, it is impossible to identify which one of printed documents corresponds to which one of document data stored on computers of users.
Another problem occurs in a printing center that prints documents for many general customers. In such a printing center, it is required to print documents in accordance with original data received from customers without any intentional or unintentional modification. However, it is not known to effectively certify that no modification was made.
Theoretically, it is possible to automatically identify printed documents by scanning printed documents, comparing data obtained by scanning with data stored on computers, and detecting correspondence between printed documents and data stored on computers. However, scanning of printed documents is very inefficient, and thus this technique is not practical.